The Rise of Historical Criticism

by Oscar Wilde

CHAPTER I

HISTORICAL criticism nowhere occurs as an isolated fact in the civilisation or literature of any people. It is part of that
complex working towards freedom which may be described as the
revolt against authority. It is merely one facet of that
speculative spirit of an innovation, which in the sphere of action
produces democracy and revolution, and in that of thought is the
parent of philosophy and physical science; and its importance as a
factor of progress is based not so much on the results it attains,
as on the tone of thought which it represents, and the method by
which it works.

Being thus the resultant of forces essentially revolutionary, it is
not to be found in the ancient world among the material despotisms
of Asia or the stationary civilisation of Egypt. The clay
cylinders of Assyria and Babylon, the hieroglyphics of the
pyramids, form not history but the material for history.

The Chinese annals, ascending as they do to the barbarous forest
life of the nation, are marked with a soberness of judgment, a
freedom from invention, which is almost unparalleled in the
writings of any people; but the protective spirit which is the
characteristic of that people proved as fatal to their literature
as to their commerce. Free criticism is as unknown as free trade.
While as regards the Hindus, their acute, analytical and logical
mind is directed rather to grammar, criticism and philosophy than
to history or chronology. Indeed, in history their imagination
seems to have run wild, legend and fact are so indissolubly mingled
together that any attempt to separate them seems vain. If we
except the identification of the Greek Sandracottus with the Indian
Chandragupta, we have really no clue by which we can test the truth
of their writings or examine their method of investigation.

It is among the Hellenic branch of the Indo-Germanic race that
history proper is to be found, as well as the spirit of historical
criticism; among that wonderful offshoot of the primitive Aryans,
whom we call by the name of Greeks and to whom, as has been well
said, we owe all that moves in the world except the blind forces of
nature.

For, from the day when they left the chill table-lands of Tibet and
journeyed, a nomad people, to AEgean shores, the characteristic of
their nature has been the search for light, and the spirit of
historical criticism is part of that wonderful Aufklarung or
illumination of the intellect which seems to have burst on the
Greek race like a great flood of light about the sixth century B.C.

L'ESPRIT D'UN SIECLE NE NAIT PAS ET NE MEURT PAS E JOUR FIXE, and
the first critic is perhaps as difficult to discover as the first
man. It is from democracy that the spirit of criticism borrows its
intolerance of dogmatic authority, from physical science the
alluring analogies of law and order, from philosophy the conception
of an essential unity underlying the complex manifestations of
phenomena. It appears first rather as a changed attitude of mind
than as a principle of research, and its earliest influences are to
be found in the sacred writings.